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2019 Volkswagen E-Golf MOT pass rate

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Pass rate

89.1%

Above average — 0.4 pts behind the 89.5% that cars this age and mileage manage.

Across 11,911 recorded tests.

Typical repair bill £41–£93

Which year to buy

  • Best 2021 91.0% pass
  • Avoid 2018 88.6% pass

Across the 4 years on record, a spread of 2.4 points. See every year →

First-attempt pass
87.8%
Typical mileage
34k mi

The 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf MOT pass rate is 89.1% of its MOT tests — about what its age and mileage predict. Tyres is the biggest single reason it fails, at 52.3% of what testers record.

MOT PASS RATES

The 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf on the real record

89.1% of 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf MOTs passed — 11,911 tests, 2023–2025

Pass rate

The answer from the DVSA's class-4 MOT records.

Expert verdict

Tyres: 2.6× the national share

Tyres make up 52.3% of everything recorded on the 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf, against 19.8% nationally — 32.5 points above. Check all four tyres yourself, including the inner shoulders, and look at the date stamp — a tyre can pass on tread and still be six years old.

Written from this page's own figures: fault shares against the national composition, the like-for-like pass rate, and the priced repair list. How these are worked out

Watching a Volkswagen E-Golf? Get an email when these numbers change .

How does the 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf compare?

Cars of this age and mileage average 89.5%, so this figure is 0.4 points behind what its age and mileage predict. On a first attempt, before any retests, the figure drops to 87.8%. The median 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf in this dataset had covered 33,984 mi.

Pass rates also shift with the test month: tests recorded October–March passed 89.1% of the time, April–September 89.0%.

The single most recorded failure item is "Has a cut in excess of the requirements deep enough to reach the ply or cords", noted on 2.82% of tests.

  • 11,911 recorded tests behind this page.
  • 89.1% overall pass rate, 87.8% on a first attempt.
  • Across every year of the Volkswagen E-Golf, the average is 89.3% — best year 2021 (91.0%), worst 2018 (88.6%).

Figures count every completed test on this vehicle-year in the dataset, including retests. See methodology for the exact definition.

This page's data

Tests analysed
11,911
Typical mileage (median)
33,984 mi
Make and model
Volkswagen E-Golf
Updated
2026-11-07

Source: DVSA anonymised MOT test data (2023–2025), OGL v3.0.

Top part to budget for

Tyres

Usually a DIY or independent-garage job.

Does mileage affect the E-Golf MOT pass rate?

0-30k 91.8%
30-60k 88.0%
60-90k 83.7%
90-120k 79.2%
120k+ 82.4%

Pass rate by odometer reading. Bar lengths start at 71% so small gaps stay visible.

Where the Volkswagen E-Golf is most common

Across all E-Golf model years on record (2018–2021): 11,501 Volkswagen E-Golf cars tested in a recordable postcode area, across 21,378 tests. Leicester (LE) has the most, with 426 cars tested there. Cars are counted by the postcode area of the MOT station, so this is where they were tested, not necessarily where their owners live.

# Postcode area Cars Share of all Tests Pass rate
1 Leicester (LE) 426 3.7% 666 84.1%
2 Derby (DE) 313 2.7% 458 92.4%
3 Northampton (NN) 257 2.2% 406 87.9%
4 Birmingham (B) 249 2.2% 475 89.9%
5 Oxford (OX) 229 2% 438 88.8%
6 London (NW) 224 1.9% 386 89.4%
7 Peterborough (PE) 223 1.9% 354 89.0%
8 Guildford (GU) 207 1.8% 425 85.4%
9 Reading (RG) 201 1.7% 394 87.3%
10 Bristol (BS) 198 1.7% 392 87.5%
11 Nottingham (NG) 187 1.6% 342 92.1%
12 Doncaster (DN) 184 1.6% 267 93.6%
13 Sheffield (S) 183 1.6% 352 90.9%
14 Southampton (SO) 179 1.6% 357 89.1%
15 Newcastle upon Tyne (NE) 177 1.5% 353 91.5%
16 Kingston upon Thames (KT) 176 1.5% 326 89.0%
17 Coventry (CV) 170 1.5% 293 92.5%
18 Glasgow (G) 168 1.5% 369 87.0%
19 High Wycombe (HP) 168 1.5% 357 88.0%
20 Ashford (TN) 166 1.4% 319 90.0%

The twenty areas with the most Volkswagen E-Golf cars in the record, sorted by car count — sort the columns for a different question. Cars tested at a station whose postcode area could not be resolved are counted in the model's total but in no area, so the shares add up to slightly under 100% even across every area, and an area's cars are a subset of the model's. Pass rate is blank below 30 tests in an area, where a percentage is noise rather than a finding. How this model's pass rate varies by postcode →

Regional pass rates for the E-Golf

Region Tests Pass rate
South East 2,956 89.4%
East of England 1,454 87.1%
South West 1,215 87.1%
North West 1,173 90.8%
Scotland 1,042 87.4%
East Midlands 952 89.0%
Yorkshire 919 89.3%
London 816 90.3%
West Midlands 795 91.3%
North East 325 91.7%
Wales 263 88.6%

Regions come from the postcode area recorded at the test station. Areas on region borders are assigned to the region with the majority of their population.

What fails a 2019 E-Golf

Everything a tester recorded on this vehicle, grouped into the inspection sections that produced it. The notch on each bar is the national share, so you can see at a glance whether this car is unusual or just ordinary.

Tyres 52.3%
+32.5 pts vs national national 19.8% Compare tyre prices
Suspension 23.9%
+2.9 pts vs national national 21.0% Price suspension parts
Advisories 7.1%
+2.9 pts vs national national 4.2% Price advisories parts
Brakes 6.0%
−14.9 pts vs national national 20.9% Price brakes parts
Show the other 6 fault categories
  • Visibility 5.1%
  • Lamps & electrics 3.0%
  • Identification 0.9%
  • Road wheels 0.7%
  • Seat belts 0.4%
  • Body & chassis 0.3%

Shares are of every item recorded on 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf tests — a composition, so they add to 100% across all sections, not per test.

A test can record several items, so these percentages do not add up to 100%. The exact strings, with prices, are in the full DVSA record at the bottom of this page.

Before your test

Three checks worth doing on a 2019 E-Golf

These are not generic tips — they are the faults recorded most often on this exact model, rewritten as things you can check yourself. All three take about ten minutes and cost nothing.

  1. Check the shock absorbers 1.8% of tests

    “shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak”

    Press down hard on each corner of the car and let go. It should settle in one bounce; if it keeps rocking, or you can see oil weeping down a shock absorber, that is the fault a tester will find.

  2. Check the windscreen 1.2% of tests

    “windscreen damaged”

    Check the driver’s side of the screen within the swept area for chips and cracks; anything larger than 10mm in the driver’s central view is a fail. Most chips can be resin-repaired for far less than a new screen.

  3. Check the tyre tread 1.1% of tests

    “tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm”

    Check all four tyres cold, including the inner shoulder where wear hides — 1.6mm across the central three-quarters is the legal limit, and most testers fail at 1.6mm without argument.

Shares are the proportion of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item, so they overlap: one test can record several.

What it costs to get a 2019 E-Golf through its MOT

Across the 10 items that are recorded most often on this model, the average repair comes to £41–£93 — and 14% of those repairs are parts that cost under £30.

Average repair across the 10 common items
£41–£93
Cheapest common item: washers provides insufficient washer liquid
£5–£15
Dearest common item: windscreen damaged
£80–£200
Common items a careful owner can do at home
90%
Repairs that still cost under £30
14%

Estimates from typical UK parts prices, weighted by how often each item appears in 11,911 MOT tests on this vehicle. They exclude diagnostics, retest fees and garage labour where the part is a DIY fit, and they are not figures from the DVSA dataset. Older and higher-mileage examples cost more than the average. How these estimates are built → · All MOT repair costs → · Cheapest cars to put through a test →

Every year of the E-Golf, side by side

4 model years on record, from 2018 to 2021. Across them the pass rate runs from 88.6% to 91.0% — a spread of 2.4 points. The bar under each year is the item that failed it most often.

  1. 2018 88.6% shock absorbers has a serious…
  2. 2019 89.1%
    has a cut in excess of the…
  3. 2020 89.6% has a cut in excess of the…
  4. 2021 91.0% has ply or cords exposed

Colour is the pass rate on a fixed scale, so a block means the same thing on any model. Each year links to its own page with the full fault breakdown.

Compare the 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf with another year

The raw pass rate mostly measures age. The year comparison adds the like-for-like figure, the mileage bands and the repair bill.

Compare 2019 with another year →

Compare two different cars instead →

Other 2019 cars with a similar record

Closest pass rates among 2019 cars with at least 2,000 tests, so a small sample cannot flatter itself into the list. See the full rankings: best and worst MOT pass rates.

The full DVSA record for the 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf 10 failure items · 6 advisories · 10 inspection categories · mileage brackets · all of it in the page, none of it above the fold

Every inspection category

Shares of the 9,210 individual items recorded on this vehicle, and the same share across all cars nationally. A single test can record several items, so a row is not a percentage of tests.

Category Items This car Nationally Difference
Tyres 4,831 52.30% 19.76% +32.54
Suspension 2,209 23.90% 20.98% +2.92
Non-component advisories 654 7.10% 4.18% +2.92
Brakes 552 6.00% 20.89% −14.89
Visibility 469 5.10% 4.97% +0.13
Lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment 275 3.00% 12.21% −9.21
Identification of the vehicle 86 0.90% 1.76% −0.86
Road Wheels 62 0.70% 0.75% −0.05
Seat belts and supplementary restraint systems 41 0.40% 0.82% −0.42
Body, chassis, structure 31 0.30% 5.57% −5.27

The exact failure items, in the tester's words

Share of the 11,911 tests on this vehicle that recorded each item
Recorded item Severity Tests Est. cost Part
Has a cut in excess of the requirements deep enough to reach the ply or cords Tyres Major 2.8% £45–95 Tyres →
Has ply or cords exposed Tyres Major 1.9% £45–95 Tyres →
Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension Major 1.8% £30–75 Shock Absorber →
Windscreen damaged but not adversely affecting driver's view Visibility Minor 1.2% £80–200 Windscreen →
Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres Major 1.1% £45–95 Tyres →
Wipers blade defective Visibility Minor 0.64% £8–22 Wiper Blade →
Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres Major 0.48% £45–95 Tyres →
Wipers does not clear the windscreen effectively Visibility Major 0.48% £8–22 Wiper Blade →
Washers provides insufficient washer liquid Visibility Rectified 0.39% £5–15 Windscreen Washer →
Has a bulge, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres Major 0.36% £45–95 Tyres →

Severity is as recorded: Major and Dangerous fail the test outright; Minor and Advisory do not. Costs are estimates from typical UK parts prices — see how they are built.

What testers noted without failing the car

Advisories are the early warnings — the same parts a year or two before they fail. Reading them is how you tell a car that has been maintained from one that has been patched.

Items recorded as advisory on this vehicle
Recorded item Severity Tests Est. cost
Shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak Suspension Advisory 15.4% £30–75
Has a tear, caused by separation or partial failure of its structure Tyres Advisory 14.5% £45–95
Tread depth below requirements of 1.6mm Tyres Advisory 14.1% £45–95
Non-component advisories Child Seat fitted not allowing full inspection of adult belt Non-component advisories Advisory 2.9% £20–80
Brake discs in such a condition that it is seriously weakened Brakes Advisory 2.5% £45–110
Tread depth tread pattern not visible over the whole tread area when minimum depth required is 1.0mm Tyres Advisory 2.2% £45–95

Pass rate by mileage

Mileage Tests Pass rate Median odometer
0-30k 4,808 91.8% 20,806 mi
30-60k 5,924 88.0% 42,072 mi
60-90k 1,037 83.7% 70,431 mi
90-120k 125 79.2% 99,192 mi
120k+ 17 82.4% 135,136 mi

Source: 11,911 recorded tests on this vehicle-year. Every row above is recomputed from the same DVSA extract as the rest of the page — see the methodology.

2019 E-Golf MOT questions

What is the MOT pass rate for a 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf?

89.1% of the 11,911 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf tests in this dataset passed, against a national average of 89.5% for cars first used in 2019. First-attempt pass rate: 87.8%.

What are the most common MOT failures on a 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf?

The three most recorded items are has a cut in excess of the requirements deep enough to reach the ply or cords (2.82%), has ply or cords exposed (1.86%), shock absorbers has a serious fluid leak (1.75%). Percentages are the share of tests on this vehicle that recorded the item.

Does mileage affect the 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf MOT pass rate?

Yes. Cars under 30,000 miles passed 91.8% of the time, falling to 82.4% for those over 120,000 miles. The median 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf in this dataset had covered 33,984 mi.

Does the season affect the 2019 Volkswagen E-Golf MOT pass rate?

Tests recorded in the winter months (October–March) passed 89.1% of the time; summer months (April–September) passed 89.0%. Brakes, tyres and lights are tested harder in bad weather, but the difference is small on most models.